


One Layer Thin

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Series: The Trouble with Kilgrave [2]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Antagonism, CBT, Caning, Extreme AU, Kinbaku, M/M, Mental Powers, Metal Powers, Mind Control, Piercings, Scars, Stockholm, Suspension, Temperature Play, Torture, breath play, don't use this as a guide to your sex life, extremely dirty things, genital piercings, multiple POVs, non-con, soundings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-06-09 13:45:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6909805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Mauritius, Erik Lehnsherr hunts down Kilgrave.</p><p> <em>“Get that man's helmet off!" he yells.  "Stop him!"   A metal rebar sails through the air where Kilgrave had stood - a moment before - lined up for his shoulder blades. It goes liquid, soft as a hangman’s noose and whips downward, searching for a limb, a vulnerable neck, to encircle.<em></em></em></p><p>
  <em>
    <em>
      <em>Kilgrave rolls out from under it, frantically, and gets into a crouch like a runner at the mark.<em></em></em>
    </em>
  </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An immense well of gratitude to Strange Particles on tumblr - for letting me ramble out ideas, for providing inspiration and lending a critical eye to my slap-dash writing.

La Derniere Goutte is set up on the main thoroughfare of Tamarin and it’s faux-cheap in appearance, if not price.

Perfectly positioned to catch the market crowds - the weary foot soldiers of outdoor shopping – it’s adorned with a grass roof, bamboo walls, and a bar well stocked with international and local beers. Black and white photographs of Mauritius decorate every available surface, the frames hanging askew, most of the pictures dated from the 1930s. Sugarcane plantations, the rugged ocean and its cliffs; the people - shelling oysters, selling market-wares - all of them caught on camera, standing aloof in myriad poses.

Inside, the dialect’s an impossible blend of French Creole, English, and the occasional bout of Afrikaans. Overhead ceiling fans circulate the oppressive air. It’s owned by French ex-pats who have no taste in décor, who added insult to injury by charging Erik an exorbitant price for a beer. He sips it slowly, watching the girl as she tends to orders and chats to the customers one on one.

It’s not busy - the lull between four P.M and happy hour - while the booths and a good share of the tables are taken, Erik has a stool with only one patron nearby. Sitting three chairs down - cheek pressed against the pale wood - the smell of alcohol and his unkempt body odour wafts over Erik with each circuit of the fan.

“Would you like another?”

The bartender has an elephant tattoo below her left elbow, drawn in minimalist lines; her tragus is pierced. Erik inclines his glass. “Not yet, thank you.”

“Sing out when you’re ready.”

“You have a lot of expensive yachts in the harbor,” Erik ventures, before she can turn away.

“Yachts and millionaires who do not bother to tip.”

“Millionaires come to  _this_  establishment?” he asks, dubiously.

She looks at him, buffing the glass in her hand with a dishrag, and smiles with hard eyes. “No, but their crews do, and like  _they_ say, the rich are scungy and do not tip.”

“It’s how they stay rich,” Erik reckons. She puts the glass away and picks up another, her gaze trailing from Erik’s face to his shoulders, mid-riff, to the curve of his bicep on the countertop. “Do you know any crew members from the Goldfish?”

“No. It’s an island, boats come and go.”

Erik licks a finger, pulling out a wad of notes. “How much for the beer?”

“Seventy-five rupees.”

He counts two thousand, tosses a photograph on top, and pushes the money across the bar. “Recognize the man?”

To her credit she takes a long look. She tucks a strand of braided hair behind one ear and frowns, picking the photograph up. “No,” she decides.  The bartender makes the calculation between currency without blinking an eye. “Would you like your fifty dollars back?”

Surprised at the gesture, Erik shakes his head. “Keep the rupees. Are you certain?”

“The pretty ones tend to stand out in a crowd, monsieur, and I have a good eye for detail.”

“Pretty is  _not_  how most people describe him,” Erik says sourly.

“And they say?”

“A piece of shit on a good day. Someone you don’t want to mess with on a bad one.”

“Always up to no good. You, I think, fall into the same category.” She pushes the photograph back and says formally. “I am sorry I could not be of assistance.”

Eloquently, Erik shrugs.

He finishes the beer in one swallow and prepares to stand. The first two months after Kilgrave left he’d monitored the international airport hubs - looking for disrupted security feeds - cameras that had gone down inexplicably, or employees with exemplary records who had been fired for incompetence. Like following a trail of stale breadcrumbs, Erik was hunting for the  _M.O,_  if not the physical proof of Kilgrave’s whereabouts.  ATC and Customs chatter had been non-existent. If Kilgrave had an established pattern he used when travelling with Erik, he’d abandoned it after running away.

Kilgrave was burying old habits hard.

Seafaring hadn’t occurred to Erik until after the phone-call in New York: low visibility, poor security, a way in and out of the country without drawing undue attention, he hadn’t considered it because of the slower life-style. Later, Erik realized Kilgrave didn’t need to keep a schedule. If he was trying to fly under the radar, so to speak, then  _flying_  wasn’t strictly on the board; he could afford the slower route.

Goldfish was the only yacht that departed the New York Yacht club without lodging a planned passage. Gabe Sullivan’s boat sailed out of port at 2:22 A.M, fifteen minutes after Erik’s phone-call with Kilgrave ended, tracking its GPS over the next week gave Erik its final location. In Mauritius five crewmembers presented themselves to customs after disembarking, Gabe Sullivan wasn’t among them. There were no on-board passengers listed on the manifest.

“Not unusual,” the official had insisted. “Rich people buy huge boats then only use them twice a year. The crew will take it out to keep the engines in working order, to maintain the integrity of the sails, and sometimes to earn extra cash on the side. Yes? Fishing charters, day hire, island trips, to make life more lucrative for the crew; little things the boss doesn’t need to know about, so long as the yacht is available when  _he_  wants it.”

It was plausible – except in New York – Gabe Sullivan signed for the re-stocking of the galley personally.  In Erik’s experience, rich people weren’t that generous unless they were meant to be on the manifest as well.

Erik glances outside; checking to make sure the rain’s stopped. Mauritius is a tropical climate, prone to torrential downpours in the afternoon. The rain comes fast but the storms only last for twenty minutes before they subside. Outside, the sun’s returned, steaming the bitumen and climbing the humidity into an uncomfortable zone. Parrots squawk loudly, ruffling their feathers as they sway on the wet telephone lines.

“I’ve seen him,” slurs the drunk, sitting three chairs down. “He was here last night, point of fact.”

The bartender rolls her eyes. “Our local lush, Ralph. Do not listen.”

Erik twists in his seat.

Ralph has his head propped on his forearms, one weary eye open and bloodshot. He’s staring at the photograph.

Three seats away, it probably resembles a black and white blur. Erik flicks the photograph with his forefinger. It skids down the bar in a flutter, fetching up against Ralph’s elbow. “Take a closer look.”

“Don’t need to. He’s been in here every night for a week. He uses the telephone and drinks red wine, limey prick.”

Erik’s attention is suddenly locked on him. “You said British?”

Ralph doesn’t answer. He fixes a plaintive eye on the bartender. “I still can’t figure out why you never charge him, Tess. It’s not like you let  _me_  run up a tab.”

If it’s Kilgrave – and it’s a dubious ‘if’, this is the twenty-second bar Erik has walked into since arriving - then carrying coin, metal of any kind, is the last thing he’d do.

“No person in their right mind would let you run up a tab.” Tess falters, her cheerfulness shunted aside at Erik’s expression. “Honestly, sir, he has not been inside this bar. Ralph is inebriated, easily confused. No one pays him any mind.”

“I’m a functioning alcoholic,” Ralph corrects, snippily. “I have problems, I can admit it: but hallucinations isn't one of them! And don’t play innocent with me. You went home with him, you hussy!”

Tess snaps the dishcloth down, her face changing with swift anger. “Ralph, I will drown you in the ocean if you say another word! The crabs can pick your pecker off.”

“I dare you to say that five times in a row!” Ralph goads.

She looks like she’s ready to haul off and punch him. Feeling bombarded, Erik glances from one to the other. “I believe you; in fact, I believe both of you.”

“That he’s a piece of trash?” Tess snarls.

“Whore,” Ralph returns.

The impact is like a thunderclap in the room; Tess shakes her hand out and declares vehemently. “I hate mainlanders.”

Stunned, Ralph rubs his cheek. He fixes Erik with a baleful stare. “Don’t I get a tip? At least I’m telling the truth!”

“If he shows up, I’ll consider it. If you’re wasting my time I’ll toss you in the harbor myself.”

Ralph hops off the stool and wobbles precariously before straightening. “I’m gonna take a piss,” he declares, grandly.

“I don’t go home with strangers,” Tess refutes, and then laughs into the awkward silence. “I don’t know why I’m defending myself. What does it matter?   _Who_  does it matter to, other than myself?”

Erik looks at her, the underlying emotion complicated.

When Kilgrave called the school and spoken to Medusa, Miranda had tried to leave as soon as they hung up, compelled to meet the man. Erik had handcuffed her to the office desk, had Storm and Rogue stand guard, and gone to Central Park in her stead. It was fruitless, he’d known, but Erik couldn’t stand to  _not_ go, wandering past Rat Rock, following the curvature of the lake until he’d ended near Bethesda fountain. It was the closest he’d been to Kilgrave in two months, he was in the city  _somewhere_ ; he was nowhere to be found.  The twisted sense of want had felt like a stranglehold. Empty-handed, Erik returned to the school.

There was nerve damage, conditioning, eight months of localized torture to contend with. Kilgrave wouldn’t be up to his old tricks soon, but one of the first things he had done in New York was contact a healer. Stood to reason he’d try Miranda again. The knowledge his compulsion worked over the telephone was troubling; the fact Miranda was still trying to pick her handcuffs, ten hours after speaking to Kilgrave, only confirmed something fundamental had changed. His powers weren’t the same as when Erik first knew him. Kilgrave had upped the ante. It took twenty-four hours before Miranda was free of the order, the need, to go to Central Park.

Erik considers Tess and wonders what will happen after the compulsion wears off, if she’ll remember going home with Kilgrave, or if the memory will be insubstantial, dream-like in its quality, dismissed from her mind. If the drunk is telling the truth, then Kilgrave told her to forget, and forget Tess did.

It’s pity he feels, anger too, but a good amount of the simmering rage has nothing to do with Tess.

It’s for himself, for the way Kilgrave left him on his hands and knees, the way he had turned Erik’s own power against him – metal in his anus - his ability used like a common fucking machine. Erik has a  _lot_  of strong emotions about that particular moment.

His fingers clench on the bar. Erik breathes out until the anger’s contained. “Do you mind if I wait around?”

“As long as you keep buying,” she says, shrewdly.

“A short black.”

Tess nods and heads for the cappuccino machine.

People come and go over the course of the afternoon. The room starts to swell; the flat-screen televisions come on, European football and cricket respectively. The overhead speakers turn louder, playing Creole jazz. Erik taps a cigarette out of the packet and puts it to his lips. Behind the bar, Tess wolf-whistles and points to the no smoking sign. Resigned, Erik leaves the table and pushes out the door, standing under the eaves as he lights up. The market traders are packing up their stalls. Umbrellas hang from overhead wires, providing shelter from both sun and rain. Erik works the stiffness from his neck.

Flame trees, flowering red as a recent murder, sway in the ocean breeze. Carts wheel by, clacking on the street with their heavy loads. Erik exhales, blowing a perfect ring, and drops the butt, grinding his heel against the ground. Twenty yards away, on the downhill side of the road, Kilgrave dodges around a group of tourists by stepping onto the street, in plain view.

Shocked, Erik freezes in place.

He’s changed since Erik last saw him. Dressed like a beach bum and not a scarrick of metal on his frame. His beard has grown in, thick and black, hair longer across the fringe. His red converse runners are dusted up, his complexion darkened with the Mauritian sun. Erik grabs hold of every piece of metal he can find, warping it, changing its structure. He fixes his attention on Kilgrave’s position, bending the metal to his will. Heart beating with the adrenaline surge, Erik gets his helmet on.

Kilgrave looks up at the exact moment Erik stretches a hand forward. He stumbles as if he physically tripped and, without pausing to look, throws himself to the ground. “Get that man's helmet off!" he yells to the crowd.  "Someone stop him!"  

A metal rebar sails through the air where Kilgrave had stood - a moment before - lined up for his shoulder blades. It goes to liquid, soft as a hangman’s noose, and whips downward, searching for a limb, a vulnerable neck, to encircle. Kilgrave rolls frantically, getting out from under it. He pushes into a crouch like a runner at the mark.

"Hey!"  A stranger snatches for Erik’s arm, jerking him about violently. Red-faced, overweight, he tries to wrench Erik’s helmet off.  "Stop that!"

Erik knocks him back and darts around, trying to keep Kilgrave in sight.  The crowd turns nasty. Every trader, tourist, market-goer fixes on Erik's position with murderous intent; they converge in a melee, shouting, blocking Kilgrave from view.

Erik snarls. He flings people away by their watches, necklaces, their backpacks. He uses the guardrails as a protective barrier, and  _pushes_ , hammering the people out of his way. The noise is deafening, loud as an impromptu riot; he can't see a thing.

Outnumbered, Erik throws two coins under his feet, expanding their size into dinner plates and levitates upward, out of the clutch of human bodies.  

Mid-air, he spins, trying to reorient. Out of the corner of his eye, Erik catches a flash of movement. He tears the roof of a shop apart like a tin can, raining insulation and plaster in a dust cloud. If he can  _see_  Kilgrave he can snag him. Once there’s metal on Kilgrave’s frame the game’s over. Erik could hold him, keep him immobile, impale Kilgrave into stillness. He lurches, off-guard, when bullets start to fly, his attention re-directed to the market as a policeman fires upward from the ground. On the other side of the square, a member of the coast guard fires an orange flare straight at Erik’s chest. There’s the distant wail of approaching sirens, people baying for his blood. Frustrated, Erik swats the bullets aside, twists the muzzle of their weapons into useless artefacts.   He lifts himself higher,  _up, up_ , searching for his quarry among the chaos.

In the confusion and scramble, Kilgrave vanished like a spectre.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave throws himself over the noose, landing on the opposite side of it. He’s not stylish. He cracks his shoulder hard against the bitumen; having misjudged the landing, and bolts to his feet, running half bent for the nearest shop.

The metal noose, which had moved with purpose a minute before, sways like seaweed, searching for him without direction.

Kilgrave can’t see Erik through the roiling crowd; but more importantly, _Erik can’t see him_. As long as it remains so, he stands a chance at escape. He puts his shoulder to the shop-door and rams it open. Kilgrave runs by the startled owner, stationed by the till, and tears out the rear exit. His feet strike the wooden boards of the quay walkway. Head lowered, he keeps moving.

He snatches a baseball cap off a passerby, ducks out of his white polo and demands someone’s flannelette shirt in return, changing the colour of his clothes as quickly as he can. It’s harder to slow his pace, to drop from a run to a brisk walk to a tourist’s slow amble when Kilgrave’s nape is itching, fear churning in his gut.

_He’s here,_  Kilgrave thinks with a shocky detachment; and then more belligerently:  _Why the fuck is he here?_

When Kilgrave reaches the end of the boulevard, he shucks the red converse runners and hits the sand barefoot. Behind him, it sounds like World War Three has erupted. There’s the distinct scream of corrugated iron being torn off a shop-roof, the pop of low calibre bullets being fired into the air. On the beach, people sit up in alarm, shading their eyes as they glance around nervously.

Kilgrave doesn’t chance a look backward. Sweating, he breaks into a jog, feet kicking up the sand.

At the end of the short bay he makes the leap over the balustrade then drops onto the footpath. The traffic lights are red, the cars headed toward the market square banked up in a line. Kilgrave opts for the lane of traffic heading  _out_  of town and pokes his head through the first open window he finds – an elderly woman in her fifties sitting behind the wheel – her iron-grey hair tied back in a bun. “Take me to your home. Don’t stop for anyone.” He yanks the door open when Granny Steel-Buns unlocks it and gets one leg into the foot-well.

A red mist eddies in front of him - a gout of sulphur polluting the air like brimstone - before two yellow eyes appear.   Face and tail follow suit, as if Satan had decided to materialize on Main Street.  _Loudness_  slams into Kilgrave, his fragile control over the empathy wavering. Startled, he jerks back.

The mutant, one of the eighty per cent of their population who can’t pass as a human, smiles with teeth filed to razor points. The demon slams a dart into Kilgrave’s left pectoral and vanishes in a puff of red. He’s there and gone in less than a second, faster than human speech.

Wordless, Kilgrave plucks the feathered dart from his chest with numbing fingers. Erik warned him he had friends, he said he had more friends than Kilgrave did, but this isn't fair, this isn't... Shaking, he lets the dart drop onto the ground, where it rolls under the car. His knees refuse to lock. Behind him, cars start to toot impatiently as the light turns green. Slumping sideways, he collapses into the car seat. Kilgrave’s vision blurs; audio takes on an underwater quality, sound rushing in and out like the tide. He knows the sensation intimately. Drugged by Sufentanil twice before Kilgrave knows he has four, maybe five seconds tops, before he blacks out completely.

He’ll be somnolent, _vulnerable,_ for almost six hours.

His heart is thundering in a panic, distributing the drug faster through his system. His tongue has grown thick, stupid, inside his mouth. “H-hide... hide me,” he slurs, chin slumping toward his breastbone. “Please…hide me--”

Granny Steel-Buns gets his remaining leg inside the car and slams the door shut. The last thing Kilgrave hears is the roar of the engine as the Suzuki takes off.

 

&&

 

Fifteen minutes later Granny Steel-Buns – Eliza Mitchell to her friends and family – almost causes a three-car pile up when the demon rematerializes in her back seat.  His skin is rustic red, like dried blood, and his prehensile tail coils around her throat, the triangular point sharp as a spear. The car swerves wildly before she regains control. Her front passenger, unconscious, is wedged against the window.

“Pull over,” the demon says amiably.

“I can’t! I  _can’t._  He said don’t stop for anyone.”  The tail, blood warm, flexes against her throat before unwinding. The demon leans forward, fumbling for the incline lever. He drops the passenger seat until it’s almost parallel. He grabs Eliza’s unexpected guest by the armpits, and drags him, unceremoniously, into the back of the vehicle.

Eliza concentrates on the road, trying to make sure his rag-doll limbs don’t knock her car out of gear.

In the rear-view mirror she sees the demon rearrange the man carefully, arms, legs, and tail wrapped around his frame, and vanishes, a sinuous mist left behind in his wake. She drives home, straight home, running through red lights, avoiding pedestrians, driving onto the sidewalk when the traffic banks up. Eliza doesn’t stop for anyone. Safe in her garage she turns the engine off, worrying, because she wants to hide someone - she’s desperate to hide someone - except there’s nothing in her vehicle that will do.

 

 

 

&&

 

He regains consciousness with a migraine, a pounding headache that won’t quit.  There’s a tight band across his chest that makes breathing difficult and his body is aching. Blue-light flashes across his closed eyelids like a television screen left on overnight.

Jessica Jones says witheringly, “Kevin. He’s named  _Kev.”_

Bewildered, he forces his eyes open.

It’s a video, playing on the opposite wall of the room, the sound turned up loud.

On audio, Kilgrave hears his own voice answer, “Jessica’s delusional. She’s had me locked up in here for hours. You have to help. She thinks I have gifts but I don’t.” There’s a bored quality to his tone, the smug superiority Kilgrave had, when he believed himself to be untouchable. He knows the scene, he knows this moment, he knows what happens in the next hour of tape. He tries to pull his arms down, get his feet up, wrestling against a steel band that keeps him clamped in position. He’s making noises, inarticulate, pent-up, and his body locks rigid when Erik Lehnsherr answers on screen.

“That’s a pity. Humans don’t interest me much.”

There’s no leverage in his position and none of it stops the tape from playing, from reminding Kilgrave of how it all starts, where it all ends.  He knows what’s going to happenwhen the tape finishes – “You bastard,” he says because he hasn’t given up his anger yet, white hot and scolding, spurring his hatred onward. “Where’s Albert? What happened to your fucking _mission,_  Erik?”  There’s no answer.

The only voices in the cell are from a year ago.

Kilgrave scrubs at his cheek with his forearm and freezes at the discrepancy. His beard is gone; skin tingling with a mild heat. Kilgrave closes his eyes again then forces himself to take stock, to ignore the images on screen in favour of reality.

He’s lying face-up on a wooden horse, the type of equipment used in athletics; the beam is narrow enough it doesn’t cushion the width of his body, balanced on his spine instead. The handle-rings that should be in the centre of the horse are at the top end - both of Kilgrave’s wrists are handcuffed to it - arms pushed high over his head. A metal band loops around the girth of the horse and over his upper torso, keeping him clamped in position, so he can’t roll off. His legs are astride it, one on each side of the beam, both ankles chained to metal eyelets recessed into the concrete floor.

Matter of concern, there are metal eyelets everywhere, in the walls, floor, ceiling. A wooden cabinet is set near the door, taking up a large expanse of the corner, the contents locked away. The air is warm, recycled, and the room is soundproof. Kilgrave can’t hear anything other than the tape. There’s no natural light.  No indication of where he is, what time it is, or if he’s still on the island. The mutant who drugged Kilgrave was a teleporter.  Literally, he could be anywhere.

Kilgrave’s fully dressed but the clothing is dishevelled, the buttons aligned incorrectly, the flannel shirt half-undone, the top of his fly pressed open. When Kilgrave lifts his head to look down his body it’s to see an expanse of skin, slim torso and dusky nipples, his chest, naturally hairy, waxed bare as a prepubescent. A burst of disbelief flushes him red.

He would have been unconscious for almost six hours, if the dose administered was the same as Jessica’s, he would have been loose-limbed, _pliable._  Erik could have done anything.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tend to write multiple POV - warning this chapter is Kilgrave heavy - Erik will be up again next, and Jessica in the last chapter.

Kilgrave keeps his eyes shut. The tape plays unseen for the most part; the colours rendered in subdued blues over his closed eyelids. It’s the background audio he can’t distract from: the sound of clothes tearing, Erik’s impossible choices; the scream he let out when released from the humbler. And later – after being fucked, after being pierced - _later,_ all those soft, hurt noises Kilgrave couldn’t suppress.

It’s Erik’s voice in stereo saying _I’ve got you, I’ve got you now,_ and he doesn’t remember this part _._ Kilgrave watches because there’s a blank period in his mind - from the moment the metal bisected his penis - until the moment he woke up in the cell with Jessica on the opposite side of the glass. He doesn’t remember how Erik cradled him, the fingers carding through his hair; the cot being dragged over or the way Erik touched his brow, lifted his feet. On film Erik’s helmet hovers nervously, mid-air, then is put aside.

Stupefied, Kilgrave watches as his younger self curls into him like an isolated parenthesis, head cushioned in Erik’s lap, breathing against his groin. He’s dead white on film, albino-pale, but he doesn’t look as agonised as Kilgrave recalls when he woke up later, isolated.   One year on, listening to the audio, seeing it on film, Kilgrave’s cock tries to crawl into his stomach with renewed sympathy.

The piercings vibrating against Luke’s bike, being fucked in the clearing, _that_ was where Kilgrave first remembered falling into Erik’s mind to escape the pain - but it happened earlier, unbeknownst to him and inside of Jessica’s black site.

On the cot, Erik covers him over with a coat, tucking the material around his hips, thighs, trying to stave off shock, keep Kilgrave warm, or hiding the rings from Jessica’s (the cameras) view. Erik keeps one hand against skin at all times, his voice a continuous murmur. He stays on the cot, sitting upright, until Jessica returns and orders him out.

Off-screen the undercurrent of fear in Jessica’s voice is clear, her anger perpetual. It doesn’t sound cute – like she’s being a rebellious hell-kitten – which is how Kilgrave thought of her when he was being a dick. Her worry is genuine. If they ever encountered each other again he doesn’t know what he’d say, or if Jessica would give him a chance to speak - not likely.

In any event, he knows exactly what Jessica’s conditions were when she gave him to Erik – and he wants to say she got it wrong. Kilgrave wasn’t the most dangerous man in the cell that night. He wants to know on a cellular level if it would have made a difference? If Jessica had known the nature of Erik’s plan would she have stopped it? Interfered? Killed him quick and mercifully? Or was it poetic justice in her mind – the Old Testament living large – one of the four riders of the Apocalypse sweeping their board game clean.

Erik was War and all of its associated horrors. His pony stained red. Erik was one grief too many - one loss away - from annihilating everyone.

On screen, he touches Kilgrave’s collarbones, his habitual expression of control softened, almost conflicted. The tape jumps, skitters forward, and the next voice Kilgrave hears is his own, agreeing to give away the only leverage he had, Hope’s freedom for his own, trusting Jessica to keep her side of the bargain.

Bitterly, Kilgrave looks away when the tape turns to snow, his head filled with other memories, things he’d rather keep buried.

Jessica wanted him killed, or needed him dead. Maybe it was the only way she could rest easy herself. Jessica didn’t keep her word when Hope was released and Erik had agreed to execute him.

The anger’s still there, Kilgrave _needs_ it, unable to let it go, he’s wrapped it around him like a security blanket for the last two months but the intensity has changed.

The tape rewinds. The audio system a subliminal hum before it shuts off.

Snottily, Kilgrave remarks: “Really? I have to say you’re stealing Jessica’s best material here: drugged kidnappings and daily showings of _This is Your Life_ , to a captive audience no less. You’re losing points for originality, Erik.”

“Do you want me to be original?” The reply coincides with the door opening and closing. Erik’s voice registers low - changing with inflection and emphasis - so his accent is a confused mess. He sounds British on occasion, German at other times, and like a second generation American on a bender on the oddball occasion when Erik is relaxed. He doesn’t sound relaxed now. There’s a whipcord tension to every spoken word.

Kilgrave cranes his head. Erik has his helmet on, the metal gleaming dully. There’s a streak of ash on his left cheek, dark circles under his eyes as if Erik hasn’t slept in a solid week. A month. Maybe two. The three-day growth is reddish-brown; it covers both cheeks, his jaw, lower neck. He’s lost weight. Hands balled into fists, his body is angled toward Kilgrave like a knife.

He looks like hell.

“No,” Kilgrave decides.

Originality leads to screaming and untold agony and he’s feeling short of breath just _looking_ at Erik.

Kilgrave attempts to focus, skim outward, to feel if there’s anyone else in proximity, someone he can latch onto if needed, take shelter with. There’s nobody and nothing, a black void. Nervously, he presses his shoulders into the horse, his lower back flattened against the oiled wood. His ankle cuffs rattle. He wants to pull his feet up, close his legs at least. The tread of Erik’s boots fall heavily. He’s still dressed in the clothing he wore on the island.

When Erik appears beside the horse it’s the same surge of adrenalin that jolted through Kilgrave on the streets of Mauritius.

Erik smells like exhaustion, too many late nights and stale coffee. He smells like an electrical discharge, sharp and powerful, not unpleasant but wholly familiar. Countless nights sharing the same bed and Kilgrave _knows_ him, he breathes in before he can think better of it.

Erik’s eyes are pale as a lightning flash. Now he’s close, Kilgrave can see the minor tremor in the other man’s arms, his torso; running through Erik’s frame like a fault line.  It seems wrong Kilgrave’s cock is trying to shrivel up in abject fear and it’s _Erik_ who is shaking. He’s holding the commando dagger against his thigh, and out of all the possessions in the little black bag - manacles, helmet, gag, Erik’s change of clothing, his Glock and its fucking _bullets_ \- the knife was the one thing he’d never used on Kilgrave.

Bile surges in the back of his throat. Kilgrave’s stomach flips violently.

The last time he saw the knife Erik flayed Louise Thompson with it, peeled her skin away in flaps, tissue exposed, aged muscles sagging in the chains and so much _red_ on the floor. The factory was rancid with it. The dagger gleams in the dull light and he knows _exactly_ how sharp it is - how proficient Erik is at wielding it.

“Tell me a truth,” Kilgrave whispers, his voice all but gone, because Christ he doesn’t want to die like this.

Erik seems to focus, when before all Kilgrave saw was flickering madness. The knife whirls between his fingers like dervish.

“Albert is dead. So is Victor Baro, a senator in the shadow government who gave the order to release the contagion worldwide. The manufacturing lab was destroyed two days ago.” The knife flips from Erik’s right hand to his left before he adds callously. “There’s no one left on my list.”

No one left but Kilgrave. He can’t concentrate because this is it. This is Erik fulfilling his promise to Jessica.

He’d rather it was painless - quick as a broken neck - but his wishes never featured prominently when it came to Erik Lehnsherr. Kilgrave wants the dignity of being on his feet, not tied over a wooden block like a sacrifice; all the things he never had a chance to do bubbling up now, there’s no time. Erik touches him with the hand not holding the knife, cupping Kilgrave’s jaw, forcing his head upward until his throat is fully extended, neck bared to the blade.

Kilgrave swallows, mouth dry, with no spit available. He swallows again. His eyelashes are damp, vision blurry, gone quiet with terror. The silence in the room is oppressive and he wishes the tape were playing, some noise other than his own shallow breathing. Erik presses two fingers against his lips, fluttering soft. He taps for entry. Obediently, Kilgrave opens his mouth.

Erik doesn’t go deep; the pads of his fingers sweep over Kilgrave’s tongue and depress until it’s pinned flat. It’s uncomfortable. An evocative reminder.

It should be horrifying except Kilgrave can remember sucking Erik’s fingers once, tangled together, tasting oranges on every finger and being _dedicated_ as he licked them clean, swirling his tongue, laving them one by one.

Erik’s thumb is pressed hard against his windpipe, fingers creeping deeper into his mouth, and Kilgrave’s heart rate trips into double-time with every soft stroke. There’s an odd transference, an exchange – where Erik loses the tension in his shoulders, _stops_ shaking - even as Kilgrave shudders so violently all the chains quake. Erik sees it. He feels it. He echoes dreamily, “Tell me a truth.”

Erik takes his fingers out, dragging Kilgrave’s bottom lip down as he does.

I don’t want to die is a given.

I slept with Tess is out of the question. Erik will do worse than flay Kilgrave alive if he says that.

But he had. Kilgrave forced himself from the isolated shack once a day, the ocean rental set further away in the vegetation line of the beach, surrounded by ammophila grasses and an unruly pier that lead straight to the water. Corroded by the swelling tides, the rotting planks were like a line of jagged teeth, and Kilgrave spent hours lying there under the warm sun, ducking into the ocean to wash the sweat off. At La Derniere Goutte he was exposed to crowds, rowdy emotions, he’d come for half an hour and wrestle with the secondary power – Kilgrave wasn’t fool enough to call it a gift, it was a liability of the worst kind – and try to keep himself distinct, an isolated island, to stay in control.

If he slipped, started to unravel, if everything became too loud; Kilgrave would reach for the bar phone and dial a number before his vision tunnelled. He’d listen to an answering machine click over half a world away, in a dead man’s mansion, in a private room that hadn’t been occupied in a year - _Leave a name and number. I’ll get back to you_ \- and it helped somehow, hearing the same clipped tones that were in his memories. The voice steadied him. Stubbornly, Kilgrave wasn’t keen to examine why.

He couldn’t risk the mobile but Erik’s landline allowed Kilgrave to focus for a minute - a second, just long enough to stumble out of the bar and down the crowded streets, to the relative safety of his rental. If he wasn’t angry enough to begin with at the bar, he was certainly furious by the time he arrived home. Isolated. Bored out of his fucking skull, tasting rare steak and imagining high end dining until his mouth watered.   He missed the art scene, old culture, being able to move around in a crowded square without becoming the perpetual lobster in a slow-boiling pot, without the empathy creeping over him until he lost sense of who he was.

His success rate last night was no better. Tess took his wrist before Kilgrave could reach for his automated crutch and when she touched him, it was easy to focus on her.

Kilgrave took Tess home, tumbled her into bed. He pulled her panties down, put his mouth to her wet cunt and licked, licked her some more, rubbing his beard against her soft thighs until she came. Kilgrave felt her orgasm but wasn’t entrenched enough to affect him. Tess felt wrong. Smelt wrong. Everything about her was delicate. Wrong. Soft edges where there should be hard planes, caresses when he was accustomed to pushy demands. He was with Tess and thinking about someone else and suddenly Kilgrave was livid. _He hadn’t come._ Not even when she did; cock soft the entire time. Tess reached for him with obvious surprise.

Harshly, he’d said. “ _Forget about it.”_

It’s not the type of truth Kilgrave’s keen to confess to Erik. It’s not an admission he’s _ever_ going to make. He searches for something to keep the conversation ongoing, to delay the knife, something safe.

The current position doesn’t allow for shrugging. Kilgrave makes the best of the situation and turns his voice nonchalant. “I think I hate the beach. I was always more of a city boy, myself. Or I used to be. Cafes and culture rather than coconuts and unscrupulous sand.”

And apparently that was a little too trivial. Erik raises an eyebrow. He says bluntly, “Jessica wants you dead.”

“I _know_ that. Christ, you’re worse at small talk than I am.” Critically, Kilgrave flexes his hands inside the cuffs. “You’re a little late in keeping your promise to her.”

“Who told you I made a promise? Your mother? Is that what Louise whispered into your ear, back in England? Is that why you ran?”

He left Erik with instructions, nine hours of non-stop screwing and then make a choice - Kilgrave’s heard that tone of mayhem before - of power gathering under Erik’s skin, of impending rage.

“She wasn’t lying was she,” Kilgrave snaps. “I _told_ her to tell me the truth. She _did_.”

Because his compulsion forced it and his soddin’ empathy confirmed it. He felt Louise’s belief, her satisfaction, as she twisted the blade.

Erik’s face changes, a dozen expressions competing at once. He looks like he’s going to stab his knife through someone’s thigh and Kilgrave isn’t seeing any other contenders strapped on a horse.

“You should have told me what Louise said at the factory. _Before_ you ran.”

“Right, because informing your killer you know their future plan has _never_ ended badly!”

“You think it hasn’t ended badly now?” Erik asks, dangerously. His eyes are vivid, hot with conflict. “You trusted a human more than me. You only had three rules to obey, Kevin. It’s fair to say you misbehaved on all three accounts.”

The knife comes closer. Kilgrave’s burgeoning indignity wavers, the transition to self-preservation such a familiar, sickly, feeling.

Erik cuts Kilgrave’s shorts along the inseam, straight up. The knife-tip pricks the joint between thigh and groin – Kilgrave’s eyes go wide at the contact - before the edge skitters over the top of the pelvis, slashing the material of the waistband. Erik does the same to the opposite leg and lets the shorts fall away in fluttering ribbons. There is no underwear to remove, not a single hair on his nether regions either. His flannel shirt, with its misaligned buttons, is shoved up his belly.

Erik takes three short strides to the cabinet, puts the knife down, and returns with a stripling of cane. It’s just over a metre in length, evergreen and flexible. Erik’s movements are brittle, face set with escalating emotion; the tremor Kilgrave noted earlier returned. It’s disturbing, it unsettles Kilgrave more than the cane. Erik out of control isn’t someone he wants to meet; it spells a world of hurt. Kilgrave wants to reach out, have enough autonomy to touch. He wants to wipe that expression off Erik’s face, try and quieten the random shakes. It’s self-preservation – he knows it is - but it rolls through him like longing.

Erik’s seen his cock without the rings – he must have - but he drags the tip of the cane over the eight divot points, four on each side, where Kilgrave had been pierced through and through. He touches the scars lightly before creeping under. The cane lifts the weight of Kilgrave’s cock, balanced on top; it scrapes the four slash lines on the underside. The scars on his penis are horizontal and deep, like notches on a bedpost.

Kilgrave’s internal dialogue dissolves into jibber.

Erik strokes the underside – the touch of the cane against his cock distant - one layer removed from full sensation. He runs the cane over all the places the rings once touched, where the metal cut into his flesh cruelly.   By the time Erik draws the thin stripling away and rests the cane on top of his pelvis, Kilgrave’s ready to debase himself. The front is the only part of him unmarred, the skin smooth, it’s the most sensation he has left. Last night when Tess noticed he wasn’t as excited in bed as she was, said: _“I can rub the top of you, like a genie lamp,”_ and the flash of homicidal rage had come from nowhere. He was a hairsbreadth from killing her, right there on the linen sheets.

“It’s a cute tattoo, love, why don’t you make it realistic and cut the tusks off that elephant; sink a knife all the way through your arm.” The rejoinder was poised on his lips, ready to let fly, instead Kilgrave knocked her hand away, dizzy, and said: “Forget about it.”

Erik meets his eyes. He rolls the cane. He says in a voice like iron, “Cover yourself.”

The restraint on Kilgrave’s right wrist pops open.

It frees his hand from the wooden horse at the exact moment Erik draws his arm up and brings the cane down, whistling sharp, through the air. It’s the fastest Kilgrave’s ever moved. He still barely makes it in time.

He jams a hand down just as the cane whacks full pelt across his knuckles. Pain explodes up his arm, flares through his wrist. The impact jolts the position of his palm, so he ends up slapping his own cock, a double _clap_ in the silence of the room.

Explosively, Kilgrave hisses the air out between his teeth. There’s a second when instinct takes over - when he tries to snatch his hand away, shake the pain out – except Erik doesn’t hesitate. He brings the cane down twice as hard, aimed squarely between Kilgrave’s legs.

Kilgrave reverses course, covering his dick and testicles once more, trying to tuck them out of harms way. The location, the transmuted impact, horrifying. Erik might have denuded the hair from his balls but it’s no schoolboy rap. It’s corporal punishment in the extreme. His knuckles are scraped to the bone by the third strike, hand sore and throbbing. Kilgrave yells, he knows he does. He writhes against the metal band holding his chest down. His left wrist, cuffed above his head, is black with ligature marks, with every hard yank against the restraints.

Erik counts it to eight, fastidious as a schoolmaster, before he puts the cane aside. “Remind me: what were the rules?”

Kilgrave ears are roaring. His hand is fused between his legs, the grip hurtful. He nearly crushed his own privates, trying to protect them from the stripling, he can’t uncurl his fingers, make himself believe it’s over. His brain tries to counter-balance the physical input, body over-saturated with endorphins as Erik’s words float by, sounds and consonants that don’t reorganise into proper words.

Forced to repeat himself, Erik reiterates, “Tell me what the rules were, Kevin, or I’ll tie _both_ hands above your head. I’ll cane your prick for real.”

Miserable, Kilgrave clutches himself tighter.

Three simple rules - he’d lived by them for ten months - and discounted them in a single day. If this is Erik’s idea of a ruler to the knuckles then the location is bad enough without the added threat of taking his protection away. Without a single hair under his palm, his cock feels blood warm, the skin tender, vulnerably smooth. A cane would pulverize him. The words spill out, they tumble over each other in their haste. “Don’t speak unless instructed, do whatever you say, tell the truth…”

Portentously, Erik straightens.

“Always tell the truth.” Kilgrave flinches, because he can’t get a handle on Erik’s emotions.

Gently Erik strokes a line on his arm, from wrist to forearm. His empathy flares, sliding over the curvature of a helmet, seeking entrance before it dissolves. He’s alone. He’s utterly alone feeling this.

Erik’s eyes are watchful as a snake's. He pats Kilgrave’s wrist then tightens his grip. Inexorably, he forces Kilgrave’s right hand above his head, returning it to its original position. There’s a moment when they teeter, when Kilgrave seriously arm-wrestles for control, struggling to keep the protection, a low whine escaping as Erik wins out and reattaches the cuff.

There are finger impressions left on his cock, little white dents where he had griped himself tight.

In the cuff, Kilgrave’s hand is swelling badly after the repetitive strikes. His knuckles, the broken capillaries on the back of his hand leave blood-smears across the horse. The struggle left Erik close, his full weight lying on top, heat gathering between their chests. Erik’s lips brush the side of his face, words warm, spoken into the shell of Kilgrave’s ear. “I didn’t tell the truth. Agreeing to kill you was the safest way to leave New York.” Erik sounds like a man unaccustomed to explaining himself, but there’s a different tone as well, chagrined, as if some of the fault could be parcelled out. “Jessica wasn’t going to let you live. Period. Her plan ended with you dying. I told her what she wanted to hear. I didn’t think the lie was going to get back to you.”

Blankly, Kilgrave says, “You don’t lie.”

“I don’t lie to _you._ I don’t care about humans. You should have told me what Louise said.”

The explanation doesn’t settle easily, there’s too must dust left in its wake.

It makes something inside of Kilgrave’s chest spasm. It makes the back of his eyelids prickle with resentment because he spent ten months with a gag in his mouth, with metal imbedded in his flesh, and he found a way to _live_ like that. Unexpectedly there were moments of companionship – comfort - and he’d rather be skinned alive than admit it to Erik.

Louise Thompson believed what she imparted – and maybe it was a warped case of Chinese Whispers, Erik’s lie coming back to haunt him - but Louise was easy to believe.

Erik’s watching, the weight of his body solid, he says as if they’re bartering. “Tell me a truth: did you think it was unreasonable, asking Jessica to stay with you after everything you put her through?”

No.

Kilgrave honestly thought he stood a chance with Jessica, he believed they could work it through if they had a mind to. At the time, Kilgrave didn’t think it was unreasonable at all. But he knows a treacherous slope when he sees one and he bloody well _isn’t_ going to step off the ledge to his own damnation.

Kilgrave looks away from Erik. He grinds his teeth together and refuses to answer.

Erik pushes himself upright. “How about an easier question, if I opened the door and let you out, would you run again?”

“I’d be off quicker than a bride's nightie.”

He’d leave a cartoon dust-trail behind him.

Erik nods. He picks the cane up again, hand on either end so the middle flexes into a bow, then lets it snap straight. He touches the tip of the cane to the hollow, where Kilgrave’s collarbones strive to meet, then trails it over his sternum, ribs, the faint roundness of his belly, until it’s resting on top of his pink cock.

Kilgrave blinks rapidly.

“Cover yourself,” Erik instructs, and raises the cane.

Erik’s a fraction slower in releasing the opposite cuff.

In his non-dominant hand, Kilgrave’s reflexes are a fraction slower too.

Kilgrave can see it in slow motion; hear the noise it makes as it cuts through the air. Frantic, he struggles to get his hand down in time. He ends up deflecting the blow with the tips of his outstretched fingers. The cane hits the crease between index and middle finger with velocity, parting them like a curtain, before it barrels on through.

Kilgrave yells, full throated. The blow against his fingers changes the angle, his hips lurch wildly to one side, the cane smacks against his inner thigh, landing in the crease between groin and leg. His balls, bare and round, were not covered in time. He can feel the displacement of air _whoosh_ against them, a hairsbreadth from being pummelled. Relief, shock, agony tears through him. His hand clenches around his own meat. Erik doesn’t stop. He counts off another seven strikes, disciplined and smooth. “You gave me a choice in England,” Erik recounts when it’s over, when he pulls Kilgrave’s left hand away. It’s curled into a claw, shaking like a palsy victim. Erik secures both wrists above Kilgrave’s head, skinned knuckles pressed flat against the wood, blood smeared against the timber.

Stinging with the impact, Kilgrave’s hands feel massive. He’s aware of each knuckle, the width of his palm, the thin veins on top broken with repetitive strikes, he’s aware of the length of his fingers and the cut of his nails. Erik puts the cane away blessedly. He returns it to the cupboard and washes his hands meticulously in the inbuilt sink, his voice drifting over his shoulder. “You said put a bullet in my mouth if I intended to come after you – or walk away free if I could let you go – just in case it wasn’t clear by now _I opted for the bullet._ Nine hours on that floor, with my own power used against me, imagining what I would do when I caught you. I wanted the bullet…just not in the way you intended.”

Erik finishes up, shaking his hands dry. He picks up an industrial sized bottle of lubricant and comes to a stop at the foot of the horse. He looks at Kilgrave expectantly. _Tell me a truth,_ he seems to insist _._

“I don’t have pig-tails,” Kilgrave rasps. “I’m not swapping secrets with you like a thirteen year old girl.”

Kilgrave doesn’t have any truths to give; at least none he’s willing to share like this.

Jessica didn’t trust him. She _never_ trusted him and maybe she was right to do so. Maybe Jessica was one hundred per cent correct in assuming Kevin Thompson wasn’t worth the risk. Kilgrave fell in love…or mistook obsession for love…he would have changed for Eri –

\- for Jessica. Or at least given it a shot. Maybe a fair shake. (He saved a family from their abusive husband for Jessica – he would have tried to help). He made an overture and he was drugged, caged (gagged) well past the point when he was infatuated.

Maybe Jessica was right, maybe he _would_ have bitten the hand that fed him, eventually – maybe it was in his nature, venom like a snake - but the point is: _they didn’t give him a chance to find out_. Ultimately Erik lying isn’t the grievance that’s churning in the core of Kilgrave. Now that time has passed, now there’s some space between the events, it’s the memory of the gag that makes him furious. Erik’s use of it was constant.

Resentment, like hope, lives in the what-ifs and the could-have-been’s. It takes hold in the imagination, parallel realities where Erik trusted him and made it explicit; a reality where given a choice, he might have elected to stay because Kilgrave _wanted_ to stay. And maybe it would have been for naught, destruction on all sides – but the point is, Kilgrave has been in love twice in his life (fucked up, demented, _suicidal_ love) – and neither one demonstrated a positive return.

In forty-odd years of existence, he’s only been drawn to two people in the entire world – both had the ability, the capacity, to say no.

Kilgrave doesn’t know what that means: only he’s been _yearning_ for someone who could stand against him - or with him - of their own volition.

He had his sights set on Jessica, was obsessed with her, but he’d prefer someone not plotting his imminent death. Jessica didn’t want him. Erik had, but he kept Kilgrave mute regardless. He might be new to love, a touch naïve, but he knew intellectually there was a difference between wanting and caring. It was easy to believe Louise Thompson because Kilgrave might have been - _-infatuated_ \-- with Erik by the end but with a bit in his mouth, rings in his dick, there was no evidence to suggest he was anything _other_ than Erik’s tool. And that wasn’t satisfactory. Suddenly, bewilderingly, it wasn’t satisfactory at all.

So thank you for the invite to play twenty questions but no - Kilgrave will take his secrets to the soddin’ grave.

He shifts against the chains holding him down, hands stinging, his mind running around in loopy circles. He can feel the metal against his nipples, wrist, ankles, cool against his hairless skin.

“You ran away like a scared child,” Erik says, wearily. “Might as well look the part.”

Kilgrave had romanticised the idea of someone who could say no – but in reality - he fucking _hates_ Erik’s helmet. The chastisement burns when it shouldn’t. It really, really shouldn’t.

“Sticks and stones, Erik. That particular rhyme first appeared in 1862, in the African Methodist Episcopal Church – and was followed with the phase ‘but words will never hurt me’.   They changed it later to ‘names.’ Given my existence that’s more accurate, I think. Is that truth enough for you?” His spine feels like it’s been stretched out on the wooden horse for hours.  

Erik’s expression flickers. His eyes close briefly, his jaw clenches. It could be mistaken for disappointment.

“Too trivial?” Kilgrave hazards.

“Well, if you want to make light of it,” Erik laments, and picks up the bottle. He makes a deliberate mess, slick on Kilgrave’s cock, across his balls and perineum, silvery trails across his inner thighs, stinging hot against the cane welt.

Erik leaves whorls wherever they meet, like fingerprints on a crime scene. He pumps slick into Kilgrave’s ass until it's  _dripping_ , until he's squirming on it. Kilgrave twitches, stomach twisted into knots when Erik presses two fingers inside, no prep and no patience. It’s been months since he’s taken anything of size. Kilgrave has to force himself to remember; to will himself to relax; to not cause further injury.

Erik dips his fingers in to the second knuckle, deeper, scissoring inside. His thumb rubs hard circles across the sensitive skin under Kilgrave’s balls, on the verge of painful; he touches the cane mark just to make Kilgrave’s body jolt.

Erik doesn’t crook his fingers or attempt to find the prostate. It’s just a relentless stab inward, in a rhythm Kilgrave can’t parse or brace against.

He’s barely adjusted, conflicted as his body opens up, alive with sense memory. He can remember how good Erik could make this. Mind-bendingly good – except Erik doesn’t go for the sweet spot - when Erik folds a third finger inside, turning his hand into a cone, the spike of discomfit steals his breath away. The stretch too much too soon, tipping sensation onto a balancing scale.

Kilgrave groans. His biceps flex, trying to haul his body up the beam and _away_ until the ankle cuffs pull taut. His hips twist with the pressure. Erik rocks him on three fingers, the slick making obscene noises – _squish, squick, squish_ – until the movement goes from dragging rough into smooth acceptance, until his body relaxes into the penetration.

“I felt Charles die,” Erik confesses, wretchedly, as if it’s an appropriate topic for what he’s doing.

Kilgrave gasps; a roll of sweat runs down his rib-cage. His body flushes as the fingers twist and withdraw, twist and withdraw.

Erik’s eyelashes are a dark sweep across his cheekbones, he looks like he needs a soft bed and thirty hours of solid sleep. He looks careworn, staring upward with a vulnerability that Kilgrave wants to hide from the world, cover over, because that’s not who Erik is, that's not how people should see Erik. He groans, legs splayed on the horse, his own emotions topsy-turvy as Erik gives away little truths, snippets of himself, as if trying to match Kilgrave’s forced openness with a different sort.

“He was the most powerful telepath in the entire world and the contagion robbed him of control. He didn’t know to let go…and I felt it…brain liquefying, blood in his lungs, those brilliant lights turning off one by one.” Erik breathes out, a hiccup without air. “I thought he was going to take me with him. I wouldn’t have minded if he took me with him…but…he let go.” Erik’s expression is terrible; every muscle in his body cording tight. “He let go,” Erik repeats viciously.

And suddenly Kilgrave knows where it’s going.

He stops fighting - he stops _breathing_ \- when Erik folds in his pinkie as well. Kilgrave gulps, looks away, he looks up but he’s confronted by own hands - the _size_ of them, caned and bound inside their restraints. Soundlessly, Kilgrave implores, “No.”  Erik slows the movement, his touch unbearably gentle. Erik’s thumb has slipped from his balls to his stretched out rim. He rubs the delicate skin there, back and forth, in concentric rhythms. “No,” Kilgrave repeats. Erik lowers his head. He sucks the very tip of Kilgrave’s cock, lips sealed around the puffy crown, pleasure sparking in his body. Erik’s thumb circles, circles, circles - then ominously _dips_.

Uncontrollably, Kilgrave seizes.

He can’t see, eyelashes matted with unshed tears. He’s gone hot, the sense of blunt pressure building. Erik draws his mouth away. He licks; tongue swirling like he’s chasing the flavours of an ice-cream cone, then kisses the head chastely. Kilgrave pulses in time to his heartbeat. His mouth is open – chest straining against the metal band. Erik’s hand is unyielding.

Suspended, time slows down, condenses and disappears around a black hole.

“Breathe,” Erik whispers. Obediently, Kilgrave sucks in air, the internal pressure crushing. “Ssh, it’s alright. Breathe.  Just breathe.”

It’s not alright. He didn’t survive Erik the first time round.

Erik’s thumb tucks behind his fingers, making his hand small as possible. His lips go slack on Kilgrave’s cock, mouthing the head. Kilgrave disintegrates. Erik’s helmet is on when it _shouldn’t_ be, and he’s alone in this, utterly dwarfed by sensation. His mind is thrashing when his body can’t, trying to make it bearable. Erik’s always given him an out: a place to go to when he couldn’t manage on his own, but the helmet’s between them and he hates it. He hates the isolation. The separation feels insurmountable, it feels huge. He’s feeling every ridge, every knuckle, as it slides in.

Kilgrave gasps wetly.

He gasps as his body gives out - _gives in_ – he sobs when Erik’s hand settles inside, wrist deep, shocking in its intimacy. His body blurs, goes boneless, without borders.

“I know,” Erik whispers. He touches Kilgrave’s ribcage, over his heart, as if trying to calm the fluttering pulse.

The displacement is an internal shockwave. Kilgrave feels in his guts, hairline, in his toes all at once. He wants to thrash but moving in any direction isn’t fathomable. Erik’s grip is at the very core of him. Erik goes from nursing his cock-head to swallowing him whole, lips tight, and Kilgrave pulses harder - lights strobe behind his eyes - hectic and bright. “Stop,” he pleads.

Erik takes his mouth away, and Kilgrave wants to cry, say stop again because that’s not what he meant. He wants to batter Erik’s helmet off, crawl inside where it’s safe. Kilgrave’s cock is wet, curled up small with the strain.

Erik stares at his own arm, at the point where they connect. “Tell me a truth,” Erik says, voice wavering.

He doesn’t have a blasé thought in his head; not a single prepared lie. He can’t _see_ the truth in its entirety, just slithers, tiny fragments, moments Kilgrave can hold up against cross-examination and declare as honest - so long as it benefits him. He’s not unique in the subjective outlook, choosing what truth to display, what's most  beneficial is humanity at large.  His mouth opens and closes. _I can’t,_ he thinks despairingly. And isn’t aware he’d spoken aloud.

“Yes you can.” Erik kisses his thigh, stubble rough. He moves without jolting his forearm, looking up Kilgrave’s body as he waits.

Kilgrave’s empathy brushes outward before he flinches at the cold. It’s Stockholm syndrome, it’s ten months of captivity and terror, it’s some passing madness, all of those explanations are clinical, but the underlying emotion felt real; _is_ real to him. Erik has a healthy respect for Kilgrave’s power, kept him gagged much longer than he should have, but he’s not intimated by it, and that’s another truth. He doesn’t look at Kilgrave and think ‘monster’. He didn’t cut his losses after the factory when any sane person would have left (Jessica), _he didn’t let go._

Kilgrave has a truth - harmful, self-destructive, attractive as sin - he can feel it lodged at the very centre of him.

_Please stop, stop… I missed you._ It’s like giving away any leverage Kilgrave might have had (Hope all over again, and he doesn’t know how to trust, how and when it might be used against him.  He was gun-shy even before Jessica).

Erik shudders. He kisses Kilgrave’s thigh and says thickly: “Ready?” It doesn’t make sense until Erik flexes his hand, changing the shape from small, _narrow_ , and turning it into a clenched fist. Kilgrave’s mouth is shaped around the negative when Erik drives his arm forward.

Kilgrave convulses.

The light behind his eyes goes white. His chest _heaves_ as Erik’s knuckles brush his prostate.  Kilgrave’s cock spurts, milky white fluid across his thighs and groin. “I’ve got you,” Erik murmurs, and in demonstration, turns his fist. Kilgrave convulses again, body wrung out, helpless. His cock jerks, the pressure forcing semen from his body. He’s insensate by the time Erik takes his hand away. Hitching sobs break free from his chest, child-like and small. Erik pulls the heel of his palm out, the breadth of his hand, the length of his fingers uncurling one at a time.

Quietly, Erik rubs his cheek over the hairless skin, samples the come on his dick with quick flicks of his tongue.

It blurs after that, time seems to skitter. There’s a moment when he’s left to his own devices, alone on the horse, and it’s intolerable.   The sound of running water, of Erik cleaning up is distant, too far away. “Wait, wait,” Erik chants against the protests Kilgrave makes.

Then the cuffs are gone, ankles and wrists free, the metal band across his chest slithering to the ground in a silver rush. Erik grabs him by the flannel shirt before he can roll off the horse, hands knotted in the material. He sits Kilgrave upright on his posterior, astride the beam, and the pain flares. Kilgrave whimpers, not even adjusting himself as he rocks forward, off his butt, tipping his weight onto his balls as he presses into Erik. His hands, caned, are clumsy and stupid. He batters at the rim of the helmet, trying to get it off.

“Wait. Wait.” Erik croons. He takes both wrists, pulling them down. Erik curls his free arm over Kilgrave’s shoulder, a loose hug as he rubs his spine, the flannel shirt crinkling up and down. The planes of Erik’s chest are familiar, scent, size, the relative strength of him memorised.   Lastly, he forces something between Kilgrave’s teeth.

The tears that have been on his lashes, threatening since he realised he was going to be fisted, fall. It’s not metal like Kilgrave’s expecting but soft cloth. It doesn’t fasten at the back of his skull into a steel lock, Erik ties it in a bunny-ear loop, simple as a child’s shoelaces. Erik’s hands are shaking, in the grip of an emotion Kilgrave can’t decipher. He pulls Kilgrave off the horse, leaving the restraints behind, and backs up to a nest of blankets.

Kilgrave trips, not with wilful intent; his legs simply won’t hold. They crash down, limbs akimbo over a threadbare mattress. Kilgrave crawls up Erik’s body like a vine. Blessed heat pressed against him everywhere, calf, knees, stomach, and chest. He swipes the helmet off. His body is gaping – an external void to match his internal one – and Erik fills him up in tidal rush.

_Relief so strong its overwhelming._

Erik’s shaking, there’s a chasm in his emotions, grown wide these last months, and Kilgrave lays himself over it with the same lack of finesse he’s always had, making his presence known. Erik’s random quiver stills – he feels like relief/exhaustion/hope. He feels like old anger, stubbornness and something uncertain, like an offering of trust from a man who didn’t know how to demonstrate it any more than Kilgrave did.

Kilgrave’s falling asleep, even as the locked door disengages, as it swings open in a wide arc. “Stay," he thinks he hears.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Erik stirs drowsily. He’s over saturated with warmth, pinned between the blankets and Kilgrave’s body. The door to the room stands ajar and his thoughts are turning over, each one examined and discarded. It’s three AM according to his mobile and he feels calm, more centred than he’s been in months. He stretches, freeing up a limb to ease the pins and needles out of his left leg. Erik’s internal clock is two time zones removed - his stomach rumbles for food despite the hour and he needs to take a piss like a stallion - despite those factors he’s reluctant to move.

Erik has one hand folded over Kilgrave’s skull, soft strands of hair caught on his fingertips. He’s holding the gag together loosely under his palm. Quietly, he’s trying to figure out how to proceed.

Erik had forced this connection between them. He had done it knowingly, confident he had the upper hand – but he wasn’t unaffected when Kilgrave ran. He’s been shaking for two months, his sense of stability gone, madness wiring through his thoughts like a junkie. Like a few other plans he’s had in the past, Erik may have failed to think through all of the ramifications.

He wasn’t entirely rational to begin with, Erik allows - he hasn’t been for a long time - but Erik was _better_ when he wasn’t isolated. He was saner when he had a connection.  Charles knew it from the moment they first met and kept his door wide open, his mansion, school, free to enter.

His phone chirrups, the screen flashing with an incoming text.

Erik has to move eventually. They have to move – and then decide how to handle the mess Louise dumped them in – he can’t ignore the infractions that have occurred. Erik’s never exhorted the value of second chances – it’s another opportunity for betrayal – and the Tamarin riot is fresh on his mind. His clothes reek of smoke, an entire market square turned against him on a word. Any sentiment Kilgrave expressed has to be examined in that smouldering light, co-existing, side by side with it.

 _I missed you_ doesn’t imply _I won’t do my best to damage you_ – Jessica could testify to that – and while Erik can accept some culpability in the way things panned out, the flip argument remained inviolate.

None of it would have happened if Kilgrave had followed the rules. If he had _trusted_ Erik.

Instead Kilgrave sided with a human - his mother no less. How easily he came to the decision, the ease with which he played Erik for a fool in the lead up to it, _irks._

Any thoughts regarding England, of spending nine hours on the end of a fucking machine, can turn Erik’s mood stone black. On top of that betrayal, the riot is a goad to his unpredictable temper.

Against him, Kilgrave stirs, limbs restless.

Erik tightens his hold on the gag and immediately stops the train of thought - the associated emotions that run with it - and focuses on the present sensation; warm and calm and safe; _reluctant to move._ He feels the twitch of release, the anxiety between Kilgrave’s brows smoothing out as he relaxes.

They breathe in tandem, chests pushing against each other.   Fascinated, Erik runs his fingers up and down the man’s spine.

Kilgrave didn’t investigate the open door, or try to slip outside last night, there’s some small part that likes what Erik has to offer and a whole larger segment that’s locked down tight against the idea. Fantasy versus reality: like someone who’s happy to read about giving up control but wouldn’t allow that shit _near_ them in real life. Kilgrave’s idea of a move toward trust involved cohabitating with Jessica in her childhood home - _alongside two hostages, and a security detail_ \- Kilgrave wouldn’t know trust if Erik arranged the letters in front of him and spelled it out.

Trust, Erik believes, starts with rules – with knowing what the rules are and obeying them to a T – with knowing there will be consequences if they are broken. Kilgrave had grown up boundless, privileged, overly entitled. He had grown up without loyalty, kin, friend or country.   Without formal discipline. The law of ‘rule’ didn’t come naturally and he had tested the boundaries at the first opportunity.

Louise gave him the perfect excuse to try, a reason to kick past his fear of Erik’s reaction and say in defence ‘but I had no choice’. He _had_ a choice – his faith in Erik versus Louise’s accusation – he should have known better.

Erik’s not angry. He’s rational and calm, warm under the weight of another person’s body, he’s relaxed in spirit. He runs his hand up and down, bunching the flannel shirt, smoothing it out again. Erik doesn’t make idle threats and what he’s decided is corrective behaviour. He told Kilgrave what would happen if he gave Erik an excuse. He warned Kilgrave twice, once in a hotel before they left America, and once in an English forest, the other man struggling against the bonnet of a car. It’s not payback if it’s follow-through, it’s not revenge if it’s say…a learning curve.

If Erik had wanted, desired it for almost a year, it doesn’t matter. Kilgrave won’t alter his behaviour unless he knows for certain Erik’s line won’t bend, not even for excuses. And Erik is calm, so very relaxed, mildly hungry and toasty warm, because the hum in his mind is subterranean, entrenched so very deep.

Kilgrave had a genuine panic attack the first time he mentioned this.

It wasn’t a question of pain – tongue piercings are negligible, barely felt by the piercee - it was the permanent loss of autonomy. He’d willingly worn a gag for months to stop it from occurring. He had behaved for Erik so beautifully – right up until the moment he hadn’t - and when Erik leaves him unattended in the future, out of his immediate line of sight like he had in the factory, he’s nailing Kilgrave’s mouth _shut_ to avoid any further treachery.

Sprawled over Erik’s chest, Kilgrave raises his head marginally, eyes slitted. There’s venom gathering inside his mouth, body coiling like a rattlesnake.

Immediately, Erik recalls the helmet and gives up the ghost, the hum petering out into emptiness. Charles’ corner of his mind goes cold as space, looming like a black hole.

There’s no further point in trying to hide his emotions – internally Erik can argue ‘corrective behaviour’ all he wants – but a large part of him is still very, very, _irked,_ and the factory spiked it.

If irked were a polite euphemism for ‘I was going to flay you from calves to the soles of your feet last night, before I was distracted by small-talk.’

He’s calmer now, Erik reminds himself, much more rational than he was. But a pink elephant in a room can’t be ignored; especially by an empath, and some of Erik’s distemper must have bled through.

When the helmet slides on Kilgrave goes from looking mildly deadly to watchful in the blink of an eye. Cautiously he shifts his body weight on top of Erik, cool air replacing the heat as Kilgrave lifts his chest away, both palms braced on the floor.

“Morning,” Erik greets, before he can get too far away. He drags the gag out, uses both ends of the cloth, and pulls Kilgrave’s mouth down. The kiss is cautious, bitter, the angle is wrong, their noses bump, their teeth clash. Kilgrave snorts derisively. He slides down an inch, puts both hands on the helmet and angles it, then licks upward into Erik’s mouth, and just like that it teeters from mediocre and dry to filthy and wet.

Erik’s hips surge, body flipped to the on, on, on position.

He grinds against a slim thigh. His cock is hard, leaking, trapped inside his jeans as he ruts against the pressure. Kilgrave hums in approval, he moves his hands a fraction, thumb tracing Erik’s jaw line, skirting the rim of the helmet. His mouth is mobile; Kilgrave kisses like a sly distraction. Without missing a beat, Erik wraps both hands around his wrists, making sure Kilgrave doesn’t lift the helmet any further, and rolls them over, ankle hooked over a calf, resettling his weight on top. Erik gets his jeans unbuttoned, unzipped. He gets his cock out, heavy and thick with need.

Kilgrave breaks his mouth away, he bites Erik’s collarbone. “No.” When Erik looks at him coolly he amends. “Not yet.”

There wouldn’t be any resistance if Erik pushed in now. Kilgrave’s body would swallow his cock whole, loose and tacky with slick; he’s stretched out, _sore_. He won’t sit comfortably for a week.

Erik hesitates then kisses the corner of his mouth. He hitches his body, inch worming until his cock is nestled under the flannel shirt, in the hollow of a hipbone. Erik rocks against the swell of Kilgrave’s stomach, slow and easy, staring at the pinned wrists until his orgasm builds and crests, until he jerks and keeps jerking. Pleasure eases through him. The tension rolls away like a fog. His hands tighten.

Under him Kilgrave is pliant, watchful; he raises his head, kissing Erik gently, inviting his tongue in.

The bruising was livid, Erik thinks distractedly. Kilgrave’s knuckles were skinned to the bone, the hands a welted mess, but the swelling has gone down faster than expected.  Erik releases one captive wrist and works his hand down, over the material, the ladder of his ribs, smearing the come cooling on Kilgrave’s stomach into the flannel shirt, and then lower, to his scarred dick. Erik feels the divot points, one by one, then reaches behind his balls and touches the battered rim. Kilgrave hisses as Erik works a single finger inside, the sphincter a loose drag against his second knuckle, he’s open but not gaping. Erik withdraws, looking at Kilgrave curiously. “There’s an inbuilt sink in the cupboard. You can wash up there.”

They untangle, struggling to pull themselves upright to their feet. Kilgrave’s shirt is ruined: missing buttons and too short in length, so Erik can see his pink cock, peeking out from under the shirttails. “I want a shower. A gallon of coffee. You owe me coffee.”

“You can make the coffee,” Erik motions at Kilgrave’s hands. They need to be wrapped until the worst of the damage heals, Erik should have seen to it earlier. “I’ll trade off and make breakfast. But wash up first.”

He wants Kilgrave to see the contents of the cupboard, a smorgasbord of BDSM equipment, everything from paddles, floggers, and canes, to cock cages, TENS units and electrical wands. There are sounds, vibrators, dildos, clamps of every description, there are humblers and ball-breakers that are spike internally – like an iron maiden - there’s enough jute coiled in loops to suspend an elephant mid-air, leather slings stacked in one corner and bottles of slick. There’s a rubber tube and nozzle, currently unattached to the tap, but ready for enemas. There are gags, leather hoods, packets of bondage tape, shiny black and wet looking.

There are other things, seemingly inexplicable, a ginger root, bulbous and white, unskinned in one corner. Vick’s vapour rub – for the relief of chesty coughs! – and mouth wash; things that produce heat, or burn when applied to internal channels. More importantly, there’s a med-kit too, and Erik grabs it while Kilgrave physically falters, his complexion going sickly green as he takes stock of the equipment.

“Where are we?” Kilgrave asks, voice an octave higher than normal.

“Azazel’s.”

“Really? Azazel’s? Marvellous, Erik. You should write brochures extolling the virtues of exotic location. _Where_ is Azazel’s?”

His pupil’s are a shade darker than their customary brown. Erik raises an eyebrow. “Are you skimming?”

“Yes,” Kilgrave says, emphatically.

“Russia I think, or maybe Siberia. He never said where he lived. I didn’t ask.”

“This is the demon who drugged and kidnapped me?”

“The _mutant_ who drugged and kidnapped you. Just because he’s red and has a tail you don’t have to rely on contrivance.”  Erik isn’t into the formalities of BDSM – the masters and madams, the licking of boots or the gaudy leather – half of this equipment he wouldn’t use in a fit but it makes an impression.  Erik washes up in the sink. He tends to Kilgrave last, cleans and disinfects the broken skin around the knuckles, and then wraps both of his hands like a professional boxer. “Have you always healed quickly?” Erik asks, distractedly.

“Eighteen tonnes of public transport to the chest on a wintry night?” Kilgrave reminds. “Let’s say I’m bouncy.”

“Hmm.” Erik ties the bandage off with medical tape, his observation non-committal. “You like this.”

Kilgrave drags his eyes away from the contents of the cabinet, his expression still three parts disturbed. “What?”

“You like being with me.”

“When – in all of my caterwauling and screaming – did you get the impression I enjoyed it?”

“The part where you said ‘I missed you.’”

Kilgrave actually blushes - a slow burn across his cheeks - as if the words spoken last night were the most humiliating thing that had happened. “You had a fist in my arse,” he says, dead flat. “I would have said I was Queen Victoria if it made you stop.”

“Well, you did warn me you were a good actor.” Erik shuts the cabinet door and stalks out of the room. He fooled Erik every step of the way in England. Erik’s hungry, dying for coffee, and they can continue this discussion upstairs. He calls over a shoulder congenially: “I can arrange the corset, though.”

Erik has chips of magnesium alloy in his back pocket and the only question in his mind is ‘when?’ He used the remnants of a bullet the first time he pierced Kilgrave – ‘softer’ than the harder metals on earth – but those rings were cut in Germany, his ability to track the other man gone when they were taken out. When Erik pierces Kilgrave’s tongue he’s not using a material that can be removed. Ever. He’s trying to decide how to do it – painfully, gently, or firmly - a reminder Erik keeps his word, that he will continue to keep his word to Kilgrave no matter what. It didn’t have to hurt – it wouldn’t have hurt – if Kilgrave chose the stud of his own volition.

But Louise put them ten paces behind where they were and Erik’s sick of waiting.

Azazel’s home is not accessible by road or vehicle and the closest thing to a walking track are the game-trails - single-file hoof-prints that disappear over rocky terrain - goat trails mostly, the occasional deer track too. The house itself is perched at the edge of a ravine, overlooking the wildness below. The forest is thick and indefatigable, a tree line of mossy green that almost reaches the front door.

Lack of traditional access isn’t a concern, not for a mutant who can transport himself anywhere in the world, and Azazel prefers his privacy.

The house itself is split-level: basement in the lower section, a single staircase leading to an open plan living area. A bedroom and bathroom are partitioned off by a heavy trellis, plush ivy growing along it, as if the outside had overtaken the residence and was reclaiming the walls one at a time. A deck skirts the house, making the most of the vista, while floor to ceiling windows give the impression a quarter of the building is suspended over nothing. The forest below is vibrant, the sky a contrast in changing colours. The only discernible sound is the hum of the generator.

Kilgrave wanders by, making a beeline for the window as Erik checks the contents of the fridge.

“I thought you and Jessie were friends.”

“Business – I owed her a payment.” Erik pulls out a tub of yogurt. He stares at in dismay then searches deeper, hoping for bacon, eggs, something edible. There’s bread, strawberries in the back, a selection of fruit, a Hass avocado that could be used as a blunt weapon, the skin dark green and hard. “Coffee,” he orders, because they had a system in England and Erik’s not giving it up now.

Kilgrave returns to the kitchen, hands tucked under his armpits. “And ‘business’ meant you were the person to call when she needed help?”

“She knew I could handle you.”

“I thought Jessica preferred to take care of her own business. A hands on approach for little Miss Independence.”

“Saving Hope _was_ her business. You weren’t even an afterthought.”

And there is it. Kilgrave’s eyes flash - he doesn’t like being dismissed – reduced to a footnote. He might daydream about what it would be like if he didn’t have mind control – but Erik would bet dollars to donuts those daydreams involved Jessica _still choosing him -_ in his rose-tinted fantasy, Kilgrave got what _he_ wanted regardless if he had powers. It’s the mind-set of the corrupt that life is pre-ordained to work in their favour – and in Kilgrave’s case – it had been achieved without trying.

In his view, _Hope_ should have been the afterthought, the background character.

In his view, Jessica should have spent all of her time dealing with _him_ – the centre of her world.

Amused, Erik asks, “Are you still carrying a torch?”

“Oh…I’ve thought about setting Jessica alight more than once.”

“Grinder's on the bench.” The smell of coffee wafts through the room, freshly grounded, making Erik breathe in deep. He dishes out the yogurt, throws the fruit on top, plonks a spoon in and spins the bowl across the counter. “Want to sit?”

“No,” Kilgrave says, curtly. “I prefer to stand.” He shifts uncomfortably, hands bandaged, holding the spoon like a child.   Kilgrave paces to the wall and leans his spine against it, ankles crossed. He stares down at the bowl of fruit without eating. “She’s not ordinary, Erik, far from it. Jessica’s not ‘just a human’.”

“She’s not a mutant either.”

“And that’s your qualifier?”

“Yes. Would have you have preferred I had kept my word to her?”

“Us and them - all heil the master race.” Erik looks up, vibrating. Kilgrave averts his gaze, shoulders hunched. “Sorry. I didn’t – “

“Maybe we should go to New York. I can give my apologies and explain why you’re not dead yet. Maybe, Kilgrave, you should apologise to Jessica too. In person.”

“I think she’d prefer to kill me.”

Erik leans back in his seat, skin prickling with the cut. He’s angry, and in the helmet it’s _safe_ to be angry. “I caned your hands last night to remind you what the rules were. Do you know why I did it? Do you think you deserved it?”

For a minute he doesn’t think Kilgrave is going to respond. “Yes.  And no.  Some people give second chances instead.”

“I am giving you a second chance. Which rule do you think we covered last night?”

Kilgrave keeps his eyes on the bowl. “Truth,” he says, eventually.

“What other punishments are left?”

Erik sees the realisation sink in, sees the way his chest hitches. Dutifully, Kilgrave recites: “Do what you say. Don’t speak without permission.”

“This week is going to hurt,” Erik says, bluntly. He’s making no allowances and being honest about it. “Don’t make it worse. Get through it, best as you can, and next week will be better.”  

Kilgrave closes his eyes briefly. He puts the bowl down on the Caesar stone and resumes his position against the wall. “I didn’t have a choice. Erik, I won’t run, you made it clear you’re not letting go. You can be lenient.  I can make it worthwhile if you’re lenient.”

And there it is, Erik thinks, the mindset of the powerful, the inborn belief he still has some control. “You’re going to make it worthwhile regardless.”

The espresso, bubbling on the stovetop, starts to whistle.

Kilgrave turns his head to stare at it, eyes roaming over the counter, knives; the furniture in the room, the outside drop and the forest that creeps up to the front door. He flicks the power off, pours the coffee into two cups, steaming hot and black, and jumps topics. “When’s Azazel coming back?”

It’s like the changing of the guard – watching a whole new facade appear – Erik answers promptly. “A day, maybe two, he didn’t say.”

“He can transport anywhere?”

“Yes. He knows you have persuasion.” Erik thinks about the favour he called in, about the type of clubs Azazel is affiliated with. “Be warned, the compulsion intrigues him.”

Kilgrave smiles hard. “Did you tell him about the empathy too?”

“No.” The empathy is Erik’s secret, his to twist. He shoves a mouthful of strawberries in and chews around it. “How well did you manage in New York, without me, when you only had your father and an entire city for company?”

“I was angry,” Kilgrave says, brightly. “It worked a treat at the time. Mauritius was harder when I returned, it was...getting much harder.”

He looks perplexed, as if time and lower intensities of anger hadn’t occurred to him. He wasn’t as mad in Mauritius as he was in New York; he wasn’t blocking everyone out with a solid wall of hate. Erik wonders if he should crack a joke about Star Wars and the Dark side of the Force – except Charles gave him a similar lecture, a decade before the movie came out – trying to coach Erik to move a satellite dish without anger driving him.   There would have to be other ways to form a solid block, but Erik doesn’t know what they are and neither does Kilgrave. “What helped?”

“Narrowing it down to one person, keeping them in eyesight.”

“Like Tess?”

“Tess who?”

Erik grins, fiercely bright. “Nice try. Admittedly she didn’t remember you, but the local barfly did. One of the small people, less than pretty; I’m guessing you overlooked him but he certainly noticed you. Elephant tattoo on her wrist, a pierced tragus. Did you fuck her?”

Kilgrave’s eyes are wide, for a minute Erik wonders what he looked like, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago – huge eyes, dark hair, coltish limbs – Erik imagines. Kilgrave blinks once, he licks his lips. “No. I went down on her.”

“Did you come?” Erik asks, quietly.  His stomach has gone tense.

Silent, Kilgrave shakes his head.

“You should eat.”

“I’m not – “

“I’m going to pierce your tongue. You’ll be eating soups and avoiding solids for a day or two, there will be a lisp, but it will go away when you get used to the added weight. You should eat while you can.”

Kilgrave hurls the coffee. His face goes feral, white with defiance.

Erik’s off the seat and around the counter in two steps, viciously glad because he has an outlet now, an excuse for this prickling energy. Kilgrave doesn’t avoid him, he drops his shoulder and bulldozes Erik in the mid-riff, knocking him back a critical step. It creates space, Kilgrave slams his bandaged hand into Erik’s face, and the helmet clangs. When Erik doubles, nose bleeding, caught off guard at the ferocity, Kilgrave gets his other hand on the brim and wrenches with his entire body weight. He’s getting better at that, Erik thinks, fuzzily. It’s not the most dignified fight he’s ever had; it’s not even particularly fair. There’s enough metal in the room to band Kilgrave in steel from head to foot, but his words are hiccupping out of his chest, and there’s blanket horror in his eyes. “You won’t. You fucking _won’t_.”  As if saying it aloud will stop it - the same way it always did - before Erik.

He had a panic attack the first time Erik mentioned this.

Erik spent the early hours wondering how to do it: violently, gently, firmly? There was a time when he wanted Kilgrave to choose it of his own volition. In the end he pulls the other man off him with metal locked around his wrists.

Erik grabs the spoon from the bowl. When Kilgrave staggers back two steps Erik rabbit punches him, hard in the pit of the stomach. Kilgrave wheezes, curling over and Erik rams the spoon halfway down Kilgrave’s throat. With a thought, he widens the ladle. The metal caught behind Kilgrave’s teeth becomes hollow, forming a perfect ring. He expands the circumference until Kilgrave’s jaw is pried open, turning it into a ring-gag, and then Erik eases off and takes a step back.  

He takes his helmet off. Kilgrave’s face has gone splotchy. He has his fingers inside his mouth, trying to get the ring out from behind his teeth. He’s making wretched noises, his breathing frantic, too fast. When Erik casts a glance down, his cock has grown long, distended with the exertion, the rush of blood.

Patiently, Erik waits until Kilgrave realises the ring is too wide to pry out, and then he waits a little longer. Erik digs a hand into his back pocket. He drops the plastic bag with its metal pellets onto the island bench.

“The leather gag was only an option if you were behaving.  You lost the right in England. Do not speak unless you have my permission. Or better yet, do not use your powers against _me_.”

Erik can see the flash of tongue. He boxes Kilgrave in against the wall; Erik’s aware of the hum, in the background, as if Kilgrave’s distracted or skimming, his attention divided. “The only good thing about England,” Erik muses. “Is that it verified a theory.” He puts two fingers inside the ring, stroking over the tongue like he did last night, and feels Kilgrave shudder.

“I want this,” Erik says earnestly and then stops, because that’s not right, the wording is wrong.

He thinks about it, about how long he had dreamt about the studs, yearned for it, how it signalled ownership and acceptance, how it gave Erik control. He lets that want expand, until he’s incandescent with it, until it burns at the heart of him. “ _You_ want this,” Erik amends, into the shell of Kilgrave’s ear, and feels the other man jerk against him, bandaged hands pushing. “Yes you do, Darkly.  Yes you do.”

And Erik does want it. He wants it so badly. He’s _loud_ with it.

He can feel the smile at the edges of his mouth; he has two fingers on Kilgrave’s tongue, pinching the tip. He can see the awareness crawling in Kilgrave’s eyes – a kind of drowning horror - and something else too, fast overtaking it.   “You’ve wanted the studs for months,” Erik whispers. He brought the metal the day Kilgrave left, carried it on his person, imprinted on it. The alloy chips are personal; Erik could find them as easily as finding his own watch. He’s had them for months, wanting it, imagining.

Erik had been working toward this purpose from the moment he first saw Kilgrave - in the wet cell – Erik’s been _grooming_ him for it. He’s hard and Kilgrave is hard too. “You’re so relaxed for me. _Relax_.”

And Erik _is_ relaxed. It’s the most relaxed he’s been in his life, he knows he’s going to get what he wants. There is no fight, just the acceptance this is desired, perfectly right. It takes Kilgrave longer, eyelashes fluttering as he picks up on Erik’s impulses. He relaxes by margins, by slow shifts of his hips.   Warm with satisfaction, bright with affection, Erik tugs with his forefinger, a gentle lead, and Kilgrave flexes.  He pokes his tongue out of the ring.

Overwhelmed with success, Erik pierces him.

He does it quick and perfunctory.  Two studs running in a straight line, one visible, the other placed further back.   Erik fashions them into labrets - a stud on the top of the tongue that sits as the ‘jewellery’ piece but a metal plate on the bottom, flush to the underside, so the teeth aren’t chipped, or the enamel scrapped off.   Kilgrave doesn’t flinch when the metal goes through. He’s still breathing hard, but it’s gone from panic into burgeoning desire. Erik loosens his jeans, hands on Kilgrave’s hips, and pushes into him, tighter than he should be, the rim dragging against Erik's dick.

His hips snap upward, the two of them fucking against the wall.

Erik mutters praise: aloud, internally, a sense of joy breaking over him because look at that. Goddamn it. _Look_ at what Erik achieved. He can’t get the sense of wonder out of him. “Is this compulsion?” he asks, aloud.

Erik stares through the ring, at the metal studs clearly visible, and thinks it might be. Even if it only works on one person, even if it’s a facsimile to the real thing, Erik will take it. He’ll hold onto this leash for the rest of his life. He thrusts upward, ponderous, _entitled._ “Is this what it felt like, when you used compulsion against people?”

Kilgrave can’t answer, won’t answer, he’s coming in twitches, his cock tapping against both their stomachs.  

Erik pushes two fingers inside his mouth, digits over the newly laid studs, and confesses. “When I take you to New York I won't let anything happen.  I'm going to _protect_ you.  I'll protect you from anyone."  He sees it land, the urge planted inside of Kilgrave, too. He's powerless under Erik's hands, shaped and pulled, remodelled from a lazy indifference into whatever Erik needs him to be.  

There was a time (before the empathy) when Erik wearing the helmet was the greatest danger to Kilgrave - the largest threat to his person was not being able to control Erik - but they are past that stage.  The biggest violation is constant exposure, that fast approaching moment when, even without the helmet, he'll do exactly as Erik says, be a weapon, or a bodyguard, be a companion and his shadow, a connection that will not falter.


End file.
